The Night She Disappeared by April Henry

by:  April Henry
published by:  Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
publish date:  April 10, 2012

Gabie drives a Mini Cooper. She also works part time as a delivery girl at Pete’s Pizza. One night, Kayla—another delivery girl—goes missing. To her horror, Gabie learns that the supposed kidnapper had asked if the girl in the Mini Cooper was working that night. Gabie can’t move beyond the fact that Kayla’s fate was really meant for her, and she becomes obsessed with finding Kayla. She teams up with Drew, who also works at Pete’s. Together, they set out to prove that Kayla isn’t dead—and to find her before she is.

April Henry does an excellent job with the YA suspense genre.  I read Girl Stolen awhile back and thought it was great read.  The Night She Disappeared is very good.  I was hooked from the beginning.

The story is told from multiple viewpoints so the reader knows what's going on in everyone's head.  It's also told from 911 calls, transcripts of interviews, and other interesting items like police evidence.  This was a unique story telling method that I thought was quite effective.

The other reason I find April Henry to be impressive in the YA genre is that she keeps it clean while still appealing to a wide audience.  I wouldn't have a problem with my 10 year old reading this book.  There were some vague sexual references, but I think kids would take it a different way than adults would.  There was no vulgar language and the violence was fairly minimal.  Boys would probably like this book too, but might be turned off by the jacket summary because it sounds like it's all about Gabie and Kayla, which it isn't...half of it is told from Drew's point of view. 

Overall, it's a solid suspense novel and I definitely recommend it for the mystery lovers.